Prior art of mechanically dispensing cocktail ingredients includes the well known soda mix dispensing handset with multiple flexible supply lines and electrically controlled valves. Variations of this system are now used in over ninety percent of the bars in this country. Their success was primarily due to the time saved in mixing cocktails. Early liquor dispensers measured and recorded, but did not dispense directly into the glass at the mixing station. This caused slowdown of the mixing process and such systems failed to attain substantial acceptance.
There have been attempts to computerize the simultaneous dispensation of predetermined quantities of liquor and various mixes or soda, but the selection of proper buttons or punched cards and the necessity of moving individual glasses to the dispensing spout still caused a slowdown in the total drink making time.
These systems were failures, saleswise, because they lengthened the drink making time.
The most successful liquor dispensers, saleswise, are those which have flexible supply lines and a handset similar to those used with soda mixes, and intended to be used with one hand while the soda mix dispenser is used with the other. The theory was good, but in practice most bartenders still dispense liquor first and then fill the glass with a soda mix, wasting valuable time. Some bartenders try to use both liquor and soda dispensers at the same time, but in most cases, valuable liquor is spilled from its handset while he is reaching for or looking for the proper button to push on the soda handset. In either case, it is a two handed operation and the bartender has to wait until the glass is filled before he can add other condiments such as cherries, limes, or the like.
A recent attempt to combine the liquor and soda in one flexible hose, U.S. Pat. No. 3,830,405, has the same time loss and/or spillage problem, since only one ingredient can be dispensed at a time. If the soda mix is selected before the liquor dispensing is completed, there is an even worse danger of spilling liquor while searching for the proper soda mix button. The combined dispenser, referred to above, either limits the numer of ingredient selections or makes the selection buttons so numerous that it is time consuming to find the proper button.